President Trump’s budget chief made a vigorous defense Tuesday of the $1 trillion spending deal, saying Democrats exaggerated their wins and the administration scored the biggest victory of all in avoiding a government shutdown.
“They wanted a shutdown,” said Mick Mulvaney, the budget director. “He beat them on that at the very, very highest level.”
The comment came less than an hour after Mr. Trump tweeted that a shutdown might be the best way to go in the next budget battle in September.
“Our country needs a good ’shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” he tweeted.
Mr. Mulvaney said that he was talking about the current deal to fund the government for the next five months.
Right now I’m not worried about September,” he said.
The president’s tweet, he said, drove home the message that “Washington needs to be fixed.”
In the current budget deal, which is expect to pass Congress and get signed this week, Mr. Mulvaney said Democrats were pushing for a shutdown to show that Mr. Trump couldn’t govern.
“He completely destroyed that narrative by negotiating this deal,” Mr. Mulvaney said.
Mr. Trump and Capitol Hill Republicans have suffered blistering criticism for the deal that scored more money for the Pentagon, tacking it onto the deficit rather than offsetting it with domestic cuts, and gave into Democrats’ demands on a slew of issues.
Mr. Mulvaney said the Democrats’ claims of victory were overstated.
He pointed to the Democrats’ claim of winning $295 million to bail out Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program. That money was already in the budget, he said.
“That means no new money for Puerto Rico. No new bailout of Puerto Rico,” he said.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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